Football is "not so beautiful anymore" – so how will the World Cup stunt game really fare?

The Beautiful Game. Yeah, right. As the clock ticks down to another global footballing fiesta (copyright: every journalist since I was a kid), we all know this will be a World Cup like never before – for the obvious, wretched reason. 

But it’s more than that. A recent BBC Football Heaven clip discussed why fans are increasingly falling out of love with the game, reaching a consensus that it’s just not fun anymore. According to BBC radio presenter Rob Staton: "The phrase 'the game’s gone' is a cliché, but I think the game HAS gone in many ways. Fans are looking at what they’ve done to the World Cup and Euros – what we’re seeing every week with VAR, the toxicity around fans and owners and everything like that."

Changing of the guard

Long-standing fans will remember the 90s, when football was re-invented as part of Cool Britannia: the era of It’s Coming Home, Bend It Like Beckham and John Barnes telling us we couldn’t go wrong with three lions on our chests. That’s been the media template for international tournaments now for three decades. However, tapping into such a dated zeitgeist feels off the mark in 2026. Even the term "The Beautiful Game", generally credited to Brazilian legend Pele, depending on where you check – has become a tired cliché (yes PRs, I’m looking at the second paragraph of that release you’re sending out this week). Football has also changed. Women now make up roughly a third of England's football fandom overall, with younger women driving most of the growth since the Euros two years ago. 

So, are World Cup stunts still a thing? Well yes, of course – the media will always want good stories tied into the thing of the moment. They just need a lightness of touch that works for the social media-driven 2020s audiences. ITV’s Celebrity World Cup Sweepstake execution is a reminder that a simple idea, which everyone gets, (the office sweepstake), can turn into something bigger, and will likely always work. Obviously, it helps if you have a bunch of celebs. 

Lessons from the past

As I write, the majority of brand stunts are waiting to be unveiled – and having had a hand in various World Cup campaigns over the years – there are undoubtedly classic story templates that can be reframed. 

For example, unofficial World Cup anthems still land, whether good or bad. I had a client who wanted one for Russia 2018, so it was decided that brand ambassador and cricket legend Freddie Flintoff would cover Rasputin (geddit?). I say cover, but I actually re-wrote the lyrics on the way in the next day: ‘Rah-rah Harry Kane, England’s greatest goal machine…’ Good or bad? Dunno, but it did the client job. 

A simple reactive hit overnight can always beat a huge brand activation if the coverage gods are smiling down. My first World Cup PR stint (France ’98), saw England manager Glenn Hoddle hire controversial faith healer Eileen Drewery to accompany the squad – so, I nipped out to the local Covent Garden new age shop and recruited our own "faith healer" for a client’s table football tournament. The activity was lower league stuff, but the nationals loved how we’d taken a story and made it our own. 

Most recently, I worked with a boffin who estimated 4.6 million pints would be spilt for every England goal at Euro ’24 (to go with client’s beer offer). Did that cement the idea that goal celebrations = beer spillages? No idea, but here’s Jürgen Klopp under an umbrella in Budweiser’s Let It Pour campaign. 

There is no such thing as an old story, and no such thing as a new story. As a former national editor tells me regularly: football’s changed, but we know that World Cup stunts and strong reactive brand stories, done well for modern audiences, can be back of the net stuff.